PACS:
1. n. (acronym)Picture Archiving and Communications System. A device or group of devices and associated network components designed to store and retrieve medical images.
2. n. (acronym)Pain And Constant Suffering.

Thursday, February 01, 2007

Show Me Your Worklist!

Remember the DI ad from a few months back? My friend at Dynamic just sent me this image to remind me that there are indeed other companies out there using color worklists:

This one happens to be from Thinking Systems. I had already heard about this one from RamSoft:

Even ScImage has a colorful worklist, based on this image from an ad about their version 3.0:

(I've promised the folks at ScImage to be nice and not comment on their newer products that I haven't seen; I present this image simply to show the pretty colors.)

I am still quite happy with the way Amicas implements colors in their RealTime Worklist:

Compare that to the Impax 6.0 worklist which is not terribly colorful at all:

Why am I so hung up on colors? It's simple, really. Colors give a quick, at-a-glance snapshot of what is happening out there on my PACS. What do I need to read, what is being read, etc. Yes, the text-based approaches can do this, and give all sorts of other information, but to use them requires more, well, thinking. I have a theory that colors stimulate the more primitive parts of the brain, and bypass the cortex, going straight to the limbic system. Thus, I can feel primitive rage when a red ER study comes up, and wallow in the relief of an all-green screen, indicating that everything has been read, transcribed and finalized.

How much flexibility should we have in a worklist? Good question. With Impax 6.x, we used to be able to tailor our own, until IT took that privilege away, ostensibly for our own good. We now have to submit ideas for worklists that are approved by committee. To be fair, only administrators can create and manage worklists on Amicas. Don't even ask about Centricity.

To prepare for this post, I went trolling through the net looking for screenshots of PACS worklists. It turns out that such things are much harder to find than porn. So, I'll put out the call: Send me a screenshot of your worklist! Anonymize it as necessary, and then send it to: doctordalai**AT**gmail.com. (You wise PACS people know what to do with the **AT**, I'm sure.) I'll post them and we can have a good time comparing them. Nothing like a little audience participation, eh?

Addendum

Well, here's our first entry...this is the IntegradWeb worklist from Dynamic Imaging, courtesy of my friend Brad. Discussion to follow as more of these trickle in.